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Giftworks - Donor perfect reviews

I can sympathize as we are in a similar situation. We bit the bullet and spent the $750.00 back in 2012 to buy Giftworks and their volunteer module and it has, by in large, worked well for us. Last week I got the infamous "pay up or get out by August 31" notice and also am outraged. We are extremely reluctant to use a cloud based system and let someone else hold our data hostage, and there aren't many companies that offer installed software. DonorPerfect does but it is way too expensive for our budget. Does anybody have any other suggestions?

I think it is despicable that GW is doing this to its customers. We may not have a choice but to pay up to avoid having to convert our data (which also costs $) to another system but if we do we definitely won't be happy about it.

Thanks for talking with me, it was very helpful. I now have some ideas of what to do to keep using our data until we can switch to another CMS. I've worked in IT for many years and have NEVER heard of a company changing their licensing model and having it affect previously purchased licenses. And believe me, I made this very clear to our sales rep. Unfortunately he's only the messanger. He kept saying how the new pricing model would be beneficial to the medium and large organizations. It's very clear that Giftworks no longer cares about the small non-profits.

With your help we are able to use the Giftworks 2012 we purchased in 2012 past our deadline of Sept. 30. As a small organization we cannot afford the $1000+ a year to maintain Giftworks. We are reviewing other options for donor management, any suggestions are appreciated.

Thank you Tim for you help with Giftworks! I appreciate all of your insight, direction, and creative solution! Your IT experience saved us some serious money- and for a nonprofit like ours, every dollar counts. We are very upset with how FrontStream changed GiftWorks and threatened to shut us out of the software we purchased. Thank you again!

We have Giftworks 2013, and are now getting emails that it will be "retired" soon. Of course, we have no intentions of paying a single cent more to this company, or having anything further to do with it. After a brief but productive email exchange with Tim this afternoon, I'm confident that we'll just carry on using what we already bought and paid for, and legitimately own.

We tried to do that, but they have something in the program that shuts off your access to your data. We even tried loading our bought-and-paid-for copy on a computer that was not connected to the internet, and it would not function. I think some techies have been able to get around it, but we couldn't.

I just set the clock on the computer to before the deadline. Of course, that's not really helpful to keep running the program, but it gave me a chance to finish a mailing I was working on and then export the data.

I've had my head in the sand, not paying attention to the notices about GW software being discontinued. I just figured it would work fine but not upgrade.

So, I am very grateful to have learned from the experiences y'all have shared and just wanted to take a moment to say THANK YOU for letting others like me know what is coming! I also appreciate the software suggestions I've seen on here and will begin some research.

Has anyone decided just to use MS Access 2010 and not convert to a specific donor software? How difficult would that be to just import into Access (we have Access 2010) and learn to use it?

Alternately, we have QuickBooks Pro now and will probably upgrade to QB Premier this spring. Should we use that for receipting donors? Would it handle pledges, too?

Hey Rebecca, if you'd like to take a look at Bloomerang let me know - https://bloomerang.co/features - we also have a TechSoup offer - http://www.techsoup.org/bloomerang (hope you'll forgive the blatant promotion)

[Please do not indulge in blatant promotion. :-)

Your post does not answer the user's specific question, "Has anyone decided just to use MS Access 2010 and not convert to a specific donor software?".

I must caution you about building your own database. Do you really have the time to design and test the system, train and support user on a unique implementation, and continually enhance your database? And is your organization comfortable with taking over support and maintenance of the system if you ever depart?

QuickBooks is not a donor management system. Even if it can issue receipts and track pledges, I don't know of a way to use it to track relationships, households, email addresses, people with multiple addresses, recognition preferences, or soft credits for gifts through Donor Advise Funds, family foundations, matching gift employers, etc.